1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the technical field of apparatuses for reproducing a summary of video information to which sound is added. More particularly, it relates to the technical field for decision of partial video information to be extracted based on the level of the sound.
2. Related Background Art
As recording apparatuses such as VTRs (Video Tape Recorder) for recording and reproducing video information like a television broadcasting program have recently become widespread, digest reproduction (summary reproduction) has been in practical use. The summary reproduction provides a quick sight of video information summarized in short time to eliminate the need to view all the recorded video information.
On the other hand, there could be various types of video information such as, for example, a movie, a news program, a popular song program, and a sport-watching program in a large variety of genres provided on television. For this reason, feature parts of partial video information to be extracted in summarizing in short time according to a type of video information do not coincide with each other, by which there is a need for obtaining information on the type of video information in order to extract the feature parts thereof accurately.
In other words, an exciting part is a feature part of the video information in a sport-watching program and thus the exciting part needs to be extracted precisely, or the beginning of each news includes an outline of the next news in a news program and thus a news content change part needs to be extracted accurately.
Conventionally there is known a video information summarizing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 9-219835 as a typical one for reproducing a summary with identifying the video types.
As shown in FIG. 7, a video information summarizing apparatus 1 described in the publication is provided with: a video information input unit 2 for digitizing or decoding inputted video information; a genre information obtaining unit 3 for identifying a video information type from video information outputted from the video information input unit 2; a video section management unit 4 for managing video sections by video types as attributes; a pixel generation unit 5 for generating typical pixels of the video information and its partial sections according to a video type; a layout unit 6 for making a spatial and temporal layout of the typical pixels generated by the pixel generation unit 5 to generate digest video information; and a display unit 7 for displaying the generated video information, so that efficient digest video information can be generated for each type of video information.
In the above-mentioned summary reproducing method, however, there is a problem that a different process must be performed for each type of video information in generating digest video information. In other words, the above-mentioned summary reproducing method has a problem that a different procedure is used for generating typical pixels necessary for summary reproduction for each type of video information such as a news program or a movie to generate digest video information, thereby increasing a processing burden in the process for generating the digest video information and complicating the generation process.